Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen Cabuli (born August 17, 1977, in Kitee, Finland), is a Finnish singer. She is best known as the former lead singer of symphonic metal band Nightwish, which she became to famous with after joining in 1996. She now decided her time to her solo career, after being expelled from the team in October 2005. She married an Argentine businessman, Marcelo Cabuli, in early 2003.
Biography

Turunen began to learn music at age 6, and moved to the city of Kuopio at 18 to learn at the Sibelius Academy. She became a founding member of Nightwish in 1996 when her classmate Tuomas Holopainen invited her to join his new musical project. That year Turunen also performed with the Savonlinna Opera Festival. However, she did not become internationally famous until the release of Nightwish’s successful follow-up album, Oceanborn, in 1998.
Turunen sang solo in Waltari’s rock-themed 1999 ballet Evankeliumi (also known as Evangelicum) in several sold-out performance at the Finnish National Opera. She continued to tour and record with Nightwish all the way through 2000 and 2001, after which she accepted at the Music University in Karlsruhe, Germany. While there, she recorded vocals for Nightwish’s 2002 album Century Child and for Beto Vázquez Infinity.
In 2002, Turunen toured South America, performing in the classical Lied concert Noche Escandinava (Scandinavian Night), again to sold-out houses. Next this and an exhausting world tour in support of Century Child, Nightwish took a hiatus and Turunen came back to Karlsruhe.
Finnish President Tarja Halonen and her husband invited Turunen to the President’s Palace in Helsinki in December 2003 for the Finnish Independence Day Party, Finland’s biggest communal event, where the visitors of Finnish television station Yle called her the most impressively dressed woman, among honors given by several newspapers and magazines.
After the pause, Turunen continued to relationship with Nightwish for the album Once and supporting world tour throughout 2004-2005, and embarked on a second Noche Escandinava tour in the spring of 2004. For Christmas 2004, she released the single Yhden Enkelin Unelma (One Angel’s Dream), which sold gold in her native country, Finland. For the spring of 2005, she prepared a teamwork with Germany’s Martin Kesici, the duet ‘Leaving You for Me’, also accompanied by a video. On October 21, 2005, Turunen was asked to leave Nightwish in an open letter by the other members of Nightwish, over a dispute that involved “a changed attitude” and increased financial interest. She responded through another open letter, which was posted on her website in both Finnish and English (although the letter can no longer be found on her website, it is existing on a fan page). In February 2006, Tarja’s husband Marcelo posted a letter to her web page addressing the situation, and asked for anyone who had questions pertaining to the issues between Tarja and the rest of the band to email him. Marcelo then posted a long reply to a lot of of the questions he had received in June 2006.
Solo Career
In December 2005, she had lot of Christmas concerts in Finland, Germany, Spain and Romania. 2006 was not a break year for Turunen, who has recorded a Christmas album and vocals for her brother, Timo Turunen’s first appearance album. She will also be making an show at the Savonlinna Opera Festival.
Tarja’s first solo album, ‘My Winter Storm’, is planned for release in November 2007. Tarja also sings on track “In The Picture”, composed by Rage guitarist Victor Smolski, on Nuclear Blast Allstars’ album Into The Light, 2007.
On September 16th Tarja went to Meet and Greet session / Listening Party with some fans in London to assist launch the Spinefarm UK label. At the event the fans were given the opportunity to be the 1st in the world to listen to 8 of the songs from her future album ‘My Winter Storm’ as well as ask Tarja questions. Overall the reaction was good. Tarja confirmed at the event that there would be some solo dates at the end of the year, including London.
The following day, September 17th Tarja’s solo dates were go trough Europe. The at present confirm ed cities are Berlin, London, Moscow, Budapest, Cologne, Paris Amsterdam and Zurich.
Links
Tarja Turunen - Discography
Tarja Turunen - Video Clips and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - Tired of Being Alone - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - You Would Have Loved This - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - Beauty of the Beast - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - Ave Maria - Live In Lahti - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - In The Picture - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - I Walk Alone - Video Clip and Lyrics
Tarja Turunen - Sadness In The Night - Video Clip and Lyrics